Search Tools Product Report

Recommind MindServer IR

Product Information

Platform: Windows NT, Windows 2000, Solaris 2.5 and higher, and Linux 7.1 or higher
Price: per customer depending on special features, generally $150,000 to $250,000

• MindServer engine performs analysis on the body of documents.
• Statistical analysis means that it's language-independent.
• Uses probabilistic latent semantic analysis.
• Learns terminology commonly used in the field or institution.
• IR (Intelligent Retrieval) module uses probabilistic relevance scores to improve rankings.
• Can integrate personal profiles and expert recommendations.
• Automated classification features can provide taxonomic categories in search results
  • SearchTools Report on Classification (will open in a new window)
• Recommender system can alert users to new information on topics, and perform social networking functions.
• Designed for EIPs (Enterprise Information Portals) and difficult research problems.
• Indexes HTML, text, Microsoft Office, PDF, and about 300 other file formats.
• Connectors to many content and document management systems including Lotus Notes, iManage, Vignette.
• Scalable: built on a distributed architecture, handles tens of millions of documents and up to a million users.
• Open Java APIs, CORBA and DCOM interfaces

Articles

• Search On Information Week, January 20, 2003 by Tony Kontzer
  Discusses the need for useful search engines in corporate intranets. Describes experiences in Ford's Learning Network using Autonomy; Bank One and Kaiser Permanente using the Google Search Appliance for simplicity, low cost and speed; KMPG UK's use of Verity K2 for sophisticated taxonomy and social networking; Gateway's implementation of iPhrase for support technicians; and EDS using Recommind for role-related search results.
  
• MindServer Searches Smarter Network World Fusion, June 18 2002 by Jason Meserve
  Describes the search and retrieval engine, using the example of the multiple meanings of the word "Java". Quotes CEO as saying that information management is one problem, so the company does not break it up into search, taxonomy, categorization and recommendations. Personalization, by tracking individual usage and group membership, can improve relevance rankings. Users can have topics for search results as well as the automatic categories, and the system can incorporate external data such as the MESH thesaurus for the National Library of Medicine.
• Customer response to Mindserver Recommind Press Release, June 25 2002
  Quotes the head of IT Development at ZDF, Europe's largest television station saying that Mindserver expands capacity, improves quality and accessibility. Other materials quote a program manager at the Department of Energyís Office of Science and Technical Investigation (OSTI), saying that the categorization tool "significantly outperformed our human experts in terms of accuracy and consistency."

Examples

• MEDLINEplus The National Library of Medicine's service provides a wide range of public health information from NLM and other trustworthy medical sites.